Nurses will see Australia’s new citizenship laws as one more reason to leave New Zealand in search of better pay and conditions, says the New Zealand Nurses Organisation.

And an economist has warned that employers - including Government - will need to step up their offerings to those who see the removal of bureaucratic hurdles as one more reason to go.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says he is not expecting a mass exodus of Kiwis chasing higher wages and warmer weather across the Tasman after Australia today introduced new pathways to citizenship.

Today’s announcement will mean Kiwis who have been in Australia longer than four years already can apply for citizenship, attaining all of the associated rights that come with it. It is also future-focused, meaning any New Zealander who arrived in the country will be able to also get citizenship four years later.

Nurses Organisation president Anne Daniels said her reaction on hearing the news was a concern about the added pressure it would put on New Zealand’s workforce.

 “Australia is actively recruiting New Zealand nurses,” she said. “They are holding recruiting hui around New Zealand. We are all competing for the same resource. We need to be competitive with Australia.”

Daniels said short-term locum contracts in Australia attracted New Zealand nurses who were able to earn as much as $8000 a week, but even staff roles offered higher pay and better conditions than those for nurses here. There were also better professional development pathways that Australian nurses were paid to pursue, she said.

“They are better rewarded, they are more valued and they are more respected. I’m very, very worried. I’m glad for the people in Australia, but the Government in this country need to step up to the plate.”

“We are treated like second-class citizens, mostly because we are a female-dominated profession.”

Most Australian states also operated on a nurse-patient ratio to ensure practice and patient safety - a move that New Zealand nurses wanted here.

“This is very much, as far as I’m concerned, a gender issue,” said Daniels. She said the Resident Doctors Association had just renegotiated incentive payments for taking on extra duties of $95 – $220 per hour. In contrast, nurses last winter received $100 for each additional eight-hour shift worked during extreme staffing pressure, but this year had been offered nothing.

“We are treated like second-class citizens, mostly because we are a female-dominated profession.”

NZ College of Midwives chief executive Alison Eddy said it was difficult to understand what impact it would have on a stressed and under-staffed midwifery profession and wanted to see Government proactively work with the profession to understand what gaps might emerge.

“I hope they will be thinking strategically about that. There could be many people who don’t want to go because of citizenship hurdles.”

Eddy said highly-paid locum work would hold an appeal for some midwives, but there could be less opportunity for professional satisfaction because the profession operated differently in Australia, without the agency and autonomy midwives in New Zealand had.

Alison Eddy, chief executive of the NZ College of Midwives.

Eddy said she personally knew of people who had returned from living in Australia when their children reached university age so they could enter study here. She said the new citizenship process would remove barriers for families accessing various aspects of Australian life and could “be significant for returning migrants”.

Economist Shamubeel Eaqub said employers of essential workers would have to step up their offerings to staff who could find Australia’s higher pay, lower cost of living, cheaper housing and more expansive career prospects appealing.

“I think, quite frankly, we are very weak with security and pay for many essential workers, and it shows because they are voting with their feet. We have to sort this stuff out, and it will be uncomfortable because it costs money.”

However, he said immigration statistics showed that Kiwis have continued to move across the Tasman during the years the restrictive citizenship pathway existed and didn’t believe opening up citizenship “would be a deciding factor”. He said immigration data showed there were those who would pursue migration regardless.

“We were treated like second-class citizens in Australia because we couldn’t access that safety [which comes with citizenship], even though we were contributing in every other way.”

Net migration historically favours New Zealanders moving to Australia, and currently, about 700,000 New Zealanders live there, compared to 70,000 Australians in New Zealand. Immigration statistics show a net migration loss from New Zealand to Australia which averaged nearly 30,000 people a year during 2004–2013, and about 3,000 a year during 2014–2019.

New rules for Kiwis seeking Australian citizenship have removed bureaucratic hurdles.

Hipkins said he did not think the new citizenship pathway would be a deciding factor in people migrating, but acknowledged there was no model predicting the impact.

“New Zealanders travel and live in Australia, regardless of whether this change was made or not.

“I don’t think that this will significantly change the calculation that New Zealanders will make when it comes to making decisions about whether to migrate to Australia.”

While the new policy will grant citizenship and associated rights after four years, New Zealanders in Australia before then will still not be able to access a range of benefits available to Australians in New Zealand.

For example, Australians in New Zealand can vote after living in the country for a year, and access full social security benefits after being a tax resident for two years. These won’t be available to New Zealanders in Australia until they become citizens.

“There are already around 700,000 New Zealanders living in Australia now. About over half a million of those were born in New Zealand,” Hipkins said.

“We don’t know exactly how many of them will be affected by this policy change because, of course, it will depend on when they arrived in Australia.

“But it is likely that a significant number of those are going to benefit from this.

“I think it’s a blimmin’ good day for Kiwis who are living in Australia, who in many cases have been living with that uncertainty for a long period of time.”

- Michael Neilson and David Fisher, NZH